Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (12 page)

           
"Wait!" Kellin cried.
"Rogan—no—"

           
Rogan's eyes stretched wide.
"This is not what you promised—" But his body was engulfed.

           
Kellin fell back, coughing, even as
Urchin did.

           
The clearing was tilled with smoke.
Corwyth pursed his lips and blew a gentle exhalation, and the smoke dispersed
completely.

           
"What did you do?" Kellin
asked. "What did you do to Rogan?"

           
"I gave him what he desired,
though of a decidedly different nature. He believed I intended to remake his
dead wife. But even I cannot do that, so this will have to suffice."
Corwyth's right hand supported the dancing woman, now rigidly still. In his
other hand, outstretched, burned a second tiny figure.

           
Urchin cried out. Kellin stared,
transfixed, as he saw the formless features resolve themselves into those he
knew so well. "Rogan."

           
Corwyth brought his hands together.
The man and woman met, embraced, then merged into a single livid flame. "I
do assure you, this was what he wanted."

           
Kellin was horrified. "Not like
that.”

           
"Perhaps not." Corwyth
grinned. "A conceit, I confess; he did not have the wit to specify how he
wanted payment made."

           
Kellin shuddered. And then the stone
in chest and throat broke free at last. He vomited violently.

           
"No!" Urchin cried, then
screamed Rogan's name.

           
Corwyth knelt down beside the creek.

           
"Wait!" Kellin shouted.

           
Corwyth dipped his hands into the
water. "But let it never be said I am a man who knows no mercy. Death, you
might argue, is better than this."

           
"Rogan!"

           
But the names were extinguished as
water snuffed them out.

           
Kellin found himself on hands and knees
in clammy vegetation, hunched before the creek in bizarre obeisance to the
sorcerer who knelt on the bank.

           
His belly cramped painfully. His
mouth formed a single word, though the lips were warped out of shape. Rogan.

           
And then the horrible thought: Not
Rogan any more.

           
A hand was on his arm, fingers
digging into flesh. "Kellin—Kellin—" Urchin, of course; Kellin
twisted his head upward and saw the pale glint of Urchin's eyes, the sweaty
sheen of shock-blanched face. Ashamed of his weakness, Kellin swabbed a
trembling hand across his dry mouth and climbed to his feet. Show the Ihlini no
fear.

           
But he thought it was too late;
surely Corwyth had seen. Surely Corwyth knew.

           
The russet-haired Ihlini rose,
shaking droplets from elegant hands with negligent flicks of his fingers.
"Shall you come without protest, my lord?"

           
Kellin whirled and stiff-armed
Urchin, shoving him back a full step before the Homanan boy could speak.
"Run!"

           
He darted to the left even as Urchin
spun, running away from Corwyth, away from the creek, away from the horror of
what he had witnessed, the terrible quenching of a man—

           
He tore headlong through limbs and
leaves, shredding underbrush and vines. In huge leaps Kellin spent himself,
panting through a dry throat as he ran. He fastened on one thought—Urchin—but
the Homanan boy was making his own way, making his own future, crashing through
brush only paces away. Kellin longed to call out but dared not risk it.
Besides, Urchin was better suited to flight than he, growing up a boy of the
streets; best Kellin tend himself.

           
Corwyth's voice cut through the
trees like a clarion. "I require only you, Kellin. Not him. Come back, and
I will spare him."

           
"Don't listen!" Urchin
hissed as he broke through tangled foliage near Kellin. "What can
he—"

           
The Homanan boy stopped short, fully
visible in a patch of moonlight. His chest rose and fell unevenly as his breath
rattled in his throat.

           
Kellin staggered to a stiff-limbed
halt, arms outflung. His breathing was as loud. "Urchin?"

           
The boy's blue eyes were fixed and
dilated.

           
"Urchin—run—"

           
Urchin's eyes bulged in their
sockets.

           
Even as Kellin reached for him, the
boy's limbs jerked. Urchin's mouth dropped open, blurting inarticulate protest.
Then something pushed out against the fabric of his tunic, as if it quested for
exit from the confines of his chest.

           
"
Ur
—" Kellin saw the blood break from
Urchin's breastbone. "No!" But Urchin was down, all asprawl, face
buried in leaf mold and turf. Kellin grabbed handfuls of tunic and dragged him
over onto his back. "Urchin—"

           
Kellin recoiled. A bloodied silver
wafer extruded from Urchin's breastbone, shining wetly in the moonlight.

           
He mouthed it: Sorcerer's Tooth.
Kellin had heard of them. The Ihlini weapons were often poisoned, though this one
had done its work simply by slicing cleanly through the boy's chest from spine
to breastbone.

           
Corwyth's voice sounded very close,
too close, though Kellin could not see him. "A waste of life," the
Ihlini said. "You threw it away, Kellin."

           
"No!"

           
"You had only to come to
me."

           
"No!"

           
"And so now you are alone in
the dark with an Ihlini." Corwyth's laughter was quiet. "Surely a
nightmare all Cheysuli dread."

           
Urchin was dead. Muttering a prayer
to the gods—and an apology to Urchin for the pain he could not feel—Kellin
stripped hastily out of his jerkin, tucked it over the exposed spikes, then
yanked the wafer from Urchin's chest.

           
He twisted his head. Where is—?

           
Just behind. "Kellin.
Surrender. I promise you no harm."

           
Kellin lurched upward and spun.
"I promise you harm!"

           
He heard Corwyth cry out as the
glinting weapon, loosed, spun toward the Ihlini. Kellin did not tarry to see if
the Tooth had bitten deeply enough to kill. He fled into darkness again.

           
Kellin ran until he could run no
more, then dropped into a steady jogging trot. Though his breath fogged the
air, the first terror had faded, replaced by a simple conviction that if he did
not halt, not even to catch that breath, he could remain ahead of Corwyth .

           
He assumed the Ihlini lived. To
believe otherwise was to court the kind of carelessness that might prove fatal.
If he had learned one thing from his beloved Ian, it was never to assume one
was safe when one could not know.

           
Deadfall snapped beneath booted
feet, then died out gradually as Kellin learned to seek out the thicker shadows
of softer, muffled ground. In six strides he learned stealth, reverting to
simple instincts and the training of his race,

           
If I had a lir— But he did not, and
wishing for one would gain him nothing save a tense uncertainty of his ability
to survive.

           
At last even his trot collapsed into
disarray. Kellin staggered, favoring his right side. Exhaustion robbed him of
strength, of endurance; apprehension robbed him of grace. He stumbled once,
twice, again. The final tumble sent him headfirst into a tangle of tall
bracken, which spilled him into shadow. Kellin lay there, winded, sucking cold
air scented heavily with mud, and resin, and fear.

           
Go on, his conscience told him. But
the body did not respond. Remember what happened to Rogan.

           
Remember what happened to Urchin.

           
Kellin squeezed shut his eyes. He
had, until the moment of Urchin's death, believed himself inviolable. Ian had
died, aye, because the Lion had bitten him, and the fortune-teller had died by the
same violent means, but never had Kellin believed death could happen to him.

           
Rogan and Urchin, dead.

           
I could die, too.

           
Could the Ihlini's sorcery lead
Corwyth directly to Kellin?

           
Run—

           
He stumbled to his feet yet again,
hunching forward as a cramp bit into his side. He banished the pain, banished
the memories of the deaths he had witnessed, and went on again.

           
—am a Cheysuli warrior ... the
forest is my home—and every creature in it—

           
He meant to go home, of course. All
the way to Mujhara herself, and into Homana-Mujhar. There he would tell them
all. There he would explain.

           
There he would describe in bloody
detail what Corwyth had accomplished.

           
The sound was a heavy cough. Not
human.

           
Clearly animal. A heavy,
deep-throated cough.

           
Kellin froze. He sucked in a breath
and held it, listening for the sound.

           
A cough. And then a growl.

           
—am Cheysuli—

           
So he was. But he was also a boy.

           
The growl rose in pitch, then
altered into a roar.

           
He knew the sounds of the forest.
This was not one of them. This was a sound Kellin recognized because it filled
his dreams-He did not cry out, but only because he could not. Lion?

           
"No," Kellin blurted. He
denied it vigorously, as he had denied nothing before in his life. Urchin had
come, and the Lion had been driven away.

           
The daytime was safe. And only
rarely did the Lion trouble his dreams now, since Urchin had come.

           
But Urchin was dead. And night
replaced the day.

           
"No!" Kellin cried. There
can be no Lion. Everyone says.

           
But it was dark, so dark. It was too
easy to believe in such things as Lions when there was no light.

           
He fastened himself onto a single
thought. "I am not a child anymore. I defeated the Steppesman and knocked
down his knife. Lions do not exist."

           
But the Lion roared again. Kellin's
defiance was swamped.

           
He ran without thought for silence
or subterfuge. Outflung hands crushed aside foliage, but some of it sprang back
and cut into the flesh of his naked torso, jerkinless in flight. It snagged
hair, at eyes, at mouth; it dug deeply into his neck even as he ducked.

           
Lion!

           
He saw nothing but shadow and
moonlight. If I stop—

           
From behind came the roar of a
hungry, hunting lion, crashing through broken brush on the trail of Cheysuli
prey.

           
Huge and tawny and golden, like the
throne in Homana-Mujhar.

           
How can they say there isn't a Lion?

           
Blood ran into Kellin's mouth, then
spilled over open lips; he had somehow bitten his tongue. He spat, swiped aside
a snagging limb, then caught his breath painfully on a choked blurt of shock as
the footing beneath crumbled.

           
Wait— He teetered. Then fell. The
ground gave way and tumbled him into a narrow ravine.

           
Down and down and down, crashing
through bracken and creepers, banging arms and legs into saplings, smacking
skull against rocks and roots.

           
And then at last the bottom, all of
a sudden, too sudden, and he sprawled awkwardly onto his back, fetching up
against a stump. Kellin heard whooping and gulping, and realized the noise was
his own.

           
Lion?

           
He lurched upward, then scrambled to
his feet.

           
He ached from head to foot, as if
all his bones were bruised.

           
Lion?

           
And the lion, abruptly, was there.

           
Kellin ran. He heard the panting
grunts, smelled the meat-laden breath. And then the jaws snapped closed around
his left ankle.

           
“Wo.”

           
The pain shot from ankle to skull.
Jaws dug through leather boot into flesh, threatening the bone.

           
Kellin clawed at the iron teeth of
the iron, bodiless beast that had caught boy instead of bear.

           
Fingers scrabbled at the trap,
trying to locate and trigger the mechanism that would spring the jaws open.

           
No lion— It was relief, but also
terror; the beast could not be far behind.

           
Keltin had heard of bear traps. The
Cheysuli disdained such tools, preferring to fight a beast on its own level
rather than resorting to mechanical means. But some of the Homanans used the
heavy iron traps to catch bear and other prey.

           
Now it's caught ME— Pain radiated
from the ankle until it encompassed Kellin's entire body.

           
He twitched and writhed against it,
biting into his bloodied lip, then scrabbled for the chain that bound trap to
tree. It was securely locked. Designed to withstand the running charge of a
full-grown bear, it would surely defeat a boy.

           
Frenziedly, Kellin yanked until his
palms shredded and bled. "Let go—let go—LET GO—"

           
The deep-chested cough sounded
again. Through deadfall the lion came, slinking out of shadow, tearing its way
through vines and bracken.